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User talk:Nishidani/Archive 34

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Latest comment: 3 months ago by Nishidani in topic Filiu 1994
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Some reflections

Latest comment: 3 months ago80 comments5 people in discussion

Events point to Israel’s strategy of emptying the north of Gaza of its Palestinian population, with both the massive bombardment that has damaged at least 222,000 residential units, . . .Everything that gave me hope that when violence reaches an unconscionable point and excessive violations of human rights are committed, Israel will be made to stop, is shattered now. I used to have faith that we would be protected by international humanitarian law, or by an outcry from the Israeli public against the excesses of their government – yet at this point I see no hope in either. Nor does it seem that there is hope that Israel will wake up from the delusion that war and violence against the Palestinians and its unassailable military strength will give it peace and security. This leaves us Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories vulnerable and with serious danger for our lives and our future presence in this land.

This article is the best I've read, succint, to the point. Of course as a founder of Al Haq, Shehadah must be dismissed as a terrorist, since Israel regards that and any other Palestinian rights organization as a front for terrorism.Nishidani (talk) 14:39, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

We believe we are on the right side of history and that we are the stones of the valley. Despite the immensity of the challenges we face, people here do not give up.

If anyone is wondering where the Palestinian Gandhis are, the answer is that they are kidnapped and taken to unknown locations where they are being tortured, sitting in military and administrative detention in Israeli prisons, killed in cold blood on the way home from school, dying of treatable wounds in destroyed hospitals, buried under the rubble of vengeance in Gaza. Despite this, there are many who will continue to grow up in Palestine’s long-standing culture of resistance.

This is a powerful piece of testimony by an American-Jewish Israeli of what just one pacifist family suffered relentlessly through 13 years of her personal relationship with them, and in particular with Ahed Tamimi , now imprisoned for incitement to terrorism either because she totally blew her cool with an hysterical outburst commending the Hamas murders on the 7th of October before erasing the twitter post or because the usual suspects hacked her account and faked the said post to trap her with a rap and a long jail sentence. The details are on Ahed Tamimi's wiki page, but Ramer's concluding remarks underwrite what the whole historic record attests, and particularly the extreaordinary stoicism of that people under engineered conditions of willed immiseration.Nishidani (talk) 17:07, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

'If anyone is wondering where the Palestinian Gandhis are, the answer is that they are kidnapped and taken to unknown locations where they are being tortured, sitting in military and administrative detention in Israeli prisons, killed in cold blood on the way home from school, dying of treatable wounds in destroyed hospitals, buried under the rubble of vengeance in Gaza. Despite this, there are many who will continue to grow up in Palestine’s long-standing culture of resistance.The fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinian people have remained steadfast for so long is a miracle of the human spirit. Extensive anti-Palestinian propaganda perpetuated by Israel and racist mainstream media coverage for decades should not rob humanity of knowing about some of the greatest activists in modern history.'

In 1900 the Christian population of Palestine was more than double that of the Jewish population (now 1.9%. from that historic 10%) One of its oldest communities survived in Gaza, under Hamas's protection (it had been threatened by Islamic Jihad). That too has come under assault, with the strike on the grounds of the Church of Saint Porphyrius, where the Gaza Triad no doubt worshipped.Nishidani (talk) 15:09, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Your list provides informative and thoughtful insights. BTW, did you get a chance to read the article from Oct. 27 by Max Blumenthal, saying there is high probability that many (perhaps even most) of the Israeli civilians (as well as Israeli soldiers) killed on October 7 were killed by so-called 'friendly' fire? It is not my intention to minimize, belittle or trivialize the proven fact that Palestinians killed many Israeli civilians on October 7, but it appears likely the Israeli military has also killed many Israeli civilians (and soldiers) on that day. Your thoughts? Ijon Tichy (talk) 11:47, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
What is remarkable about all these articles (only 1 is RS)
is that they (a) draw directly on numerous reports in the Israeli press that however (b) like these articles themselves, are ignored by the Western mainstream press. So you have a paradox: Israel's press is 'freer' than its Western counterparts in reporting on the conflict, but its political elites (including the IDF) allow themselves a far more restricted set of options than would normally be the case in deliberations on critical situations in Western countries.
Why destroy an entire landscape when the enemy is underground? There is a very simple technological weakness in Hamas's tunnel-system. It needs large numbers of audible generators, detectable by sensors, to induct and circulate fresh air. Any network could be 'neutralized' by destroying the generators, giving those inside the option of surrender or asphixiation.(Trying to think in strictly military terms, as though I were an IDF commander) Nishidani (talk) 17:55, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

More remarkable statements

Nishidani (talk) 23:05, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Palestinians play a crucial role in the Israeli health system: we comprise 30 percent of the doctors, 30 percent of the nurses, and some 40 percent of the pharmacists, and all of us are being watched these days. The health system has adopted a McCarthyist witch-hunt approach toward all Palestinians. There are many cases of intimidation and persecution against medical personnel: according to civil society coalitions monitoring political persecution at workplaces since the war began, some 20 percent of the reported cases are of medical teams.This is not entirely new. We were always asked to come and do our job, play a crucial role in the health system, but keep our feelings and political views at home. Now, though, things are much worse.Medical personnel are being accused of supporting terror for liking a social media post, or for showing any sympathy with Palestinian pain or suffering. We cannot engage in any intellectual or moral conversation about the war. We are expected to condemn Hamas and join the patriotic Israeli military frenzy, while silently watching our Jewish colleagues cheer for the destruction of hospitals, the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians, and the tightening of the blockade.'Ghousoon Bisharat, 'A Palestinian physician in Israel wrestles with her duty in the war: Lina Qasem-Hassan was due to join a medical delegation to Gaza,' +972 magazine 16 November 2023

Honourable men (once upon a time)

After the war, we heard that the first target usually seen by the pilots in the enclosed waterway was the Canberra. By chance, she was painted white, which was taken by the attackers to mean that she was a hospital ship. Without exception, the Argentinian pilots were honourable men, and not one attacked what they thought was a sanctuary for the injured.' Sharkey Ward,Sea Harrier over the Falklands, Cassell (1992) 2000 p.273.

Et cetera

Useful source for some project on the laundremat linguistics of constantly endeavouring to spin out as antisemitic virtually the whole vocabulary used to describe Israel and thereby, by rendering the topic ineffable, make criticism impossible unless the words and concepts have received a prior seal of official approval by the interested party.Nishidani (talk) 11:24, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Interview with Max Blumenthal, posted on 17 Nov 2023. He summarizes his article above, and provides additional insights and analysis, not only on the events of Oct. 7-8 but also on more recent military, political, social and cultural trends in Gaza, Israel, the US and Western Europe.
(As a Jewish Israeli-American who has many good [as well as some bad] childhood memories of growing up in Israel and still has a small number of dear family and friends in beautiful Israel, I personally found the part about the increasingly insane, increasingly ethnocidal/ genocidal indoctrination and incitement inside Israeli Jewish society to be particularly disturbing. But this is not surprising, in light of the fact that Israel is an apartheid state, a settler-colonial state.) Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:30, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
I have many wonderful memories of my time in Israel, and also of the Golan Heights, the Sinai, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. When enjoying a day off (I chose to work three shifts, from 3.30 am to 7 pm), I hitchhiked and invariably was picked up and given a free ride by taxi-drivers from Gaza, which I visited after talking my way past border guards who insisted I'd risk being murdered by terrorists. My father had been stationed in Gaza in WW2, and left a letter describing his pleasant evenings there).
Over the last few decades, I've come to the conclusion that Israel is caught up in an historical and structural logic, following on from the racial premises of Zionism, which militates against any resolution of its internal contradictions. Forget (in the sense of thinking they are part of the problem) about Palestinians: history has long wiped its arse on them. The problem is essentially what the internal, downspiralling dynamics of its limited options creates for the 'diaspora'. Zionism arose as an aggressive challenge to Jewish diaspora civilization. It took several decades of colonial accomplishments and intensive diplomatic and emotional pressuring to get Jewish communities throughout the world to anneal their vision of Jewishness, in all of its varieties, with the model Israel produced, a muscular, nationalist concept of the 'new Jew'. For readers of Josephus, all this is not 'new'. Rabbinical wisdom drew a lesson from the latter, which has now been forgotten in the tragic euphoria of successive, superficially successful wars. This latest episode, in a world where the mainstream media narrative no longer holds water because everyone, esp. the young, can access alternative media or the work of people like Blumenthal, will tend to give rise to exasperations which Israel and its commentariat will exploit to spin as a 'new' new antisemitism. No doubt antisemitism will indeed be strengthened - most cannot distinguish 'Jews' from Israel precisely because Zionism has insisted on their interchangeability. One can read Zionism, like Christianity, as a 'Jewish' heresy. The latter generated antisemitism, and Zionism itself may paradoxically, in one of those deep ironies beloved of history, produce a similar result for different reasons. But that will not relieve Jews in the diaspora of the difficult choices it must now make - retention of its assimilative humanism which has been the glory of its haskalah heritage, or endorsement, no ifs or buts, of a fierce ethnonationalism as the logic of history drives Israel even further down the path of maximalism. Best wishes 21:37, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Nishidani (talk)

Retired Major-General Giora Eiland:

The way to win the war faster and at a lower cost for us requires a system collapse on the other side and not the mere killing of more Hamas fighters. The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers. And no, this is not about cruelty for cruelty’s sake since we don’t support the suffering of the other side as an end but as a means.

The whole article is worth reading for a clue as to the kind of mentality that one often notes among the upper echelons of the IDF.Nishidani (talk) 17:50, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be.

That is almost identical in tone and content to the drift of Himmler's speech addressing troops who had just mown down about 150 Jews near Minsk in 1941.Nishidani (talk) 18:04, 21 November 2023 (UTC)


In Berlin, the city senate is considering pulling funding for the Oyun cultural centre in the German capital’s Neukölln district, after the centre’s directors reportedly refused to cancel a peace vigil by a leftwing Jewish group.

I.e.German hypervigilance against a recrudescence of antisemitism as part of its programmatic if clichéd Vergangenheitsbewältigung has now ironically morphed into a vigilante punishing of Jews who are critical of Israel.Nishidani (talk) 21:08, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Breaking News Scoop

Hamas operatives are also trained to fire on IDF soldiers when they see them' Yaakov Lappin, 'Some 10 out of 24 Hamas battalions ‘significantly damaged’,' Jewish News Syndicate 20 November 2023

It's reported than despite the vast IDF bulldozing and uprooting of Gazan agriculture, a patch of strawberries was found by a group of invasive settlers, so the compromised land of the Philistines can once more offer fertile prospects as a promised land for settlers Nishidani (talk) 06:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Cutting off foreskins as a military tactic

Taking a leaf out of battle descriptions of the Israelites against the Philistines in the Bible, the Israeli minister for Telecommunications Shlomo Karhi has apparently called for the circumcision of captured Hamas fighters.(Oren Ziv , Yotam Ronen, Carrying the pain of loss on October 7, these families are pleading for peace, +972 magazine 22 November 2023 Nishidani (talk) 09:02, 23 November 2023 (UTC))

I don't know the common practice in Gaza, but most Muslim men are circumcised though it isn't compulsory. Zerotalk 12:27, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I was going to say ... pretty empty, if fucked-up threat ... Iskandar323 (talk) 13:11, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, of course, we all should know Muslims generally undergo circumcision. That was the point of citing this trash - the unbelievable obtusity of the ignorant who have a voice in shaping perceptions of this war. The 'Philistine' of the 'piece' is the fool who wrote that. See below for another bite from the tsunami of appalling crassness flooding the airwaves.Nishidani (talk) 11:28, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Forget Sumud. It's been trumped by 'Zionist stoicism'

Yafa Adar is home.The sub-humans around her are already lying deep underground, their house has probably been turned into rubble by the army of the state of Israel. That’s Jewish, Israeli power.(Yosef Israeli a reporter for Channel 13 cited Canaan Yidor, Israelis celebrate the return of hostage Yaffa Adar, 85, whose stoicism ‘embodies Zionism’, The Times of Israel 25 November 2023 )

It is natural that in a tragedy we connect and respond more instinctively to the fate of those whom we (may) know. Yaffa Adar was originally reported to be from Kfar Aza, where I once worked. I wondered whether I had known her during my stay, while deeply moved by the photo of her in a Hamas jeep being carted off to Gaza as a hostage. The photo of her resigned, apparent ease (almost 'well, I'd better get used to this new episode in my life') will figure as one of the iconic snapshots of the Israeli side of this war. I was really chuffed up to see her safe and sound, while naturally thinking that 10,000 plus 'sub-human' Gaza women and children would not survive to tell their side of the story. Hence the obscenity of the remark above. There are few things, readingwise, more nauseating that reading the infantile outpourings of an extremely jejune nationalism.Nishidani (talk) 11:18, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Zionism – An Ideology for the Self-Loathing (27 October 2023). by Roger Harris for CounterPunch. "Yet growing numbers of us [American Jews] still embrace our ancestral identity and, especially in light of current events, wholly renounce its self-loathing antithesis of Zionism. What the Nazis failed to achieve – the obliteration of European Jewish culture – the Zionists are carrying forward. We have a word for that in Yiddish. It’s a shanda, a scandalous embarrassment and shame." Ijon Tichy (talk) 20:39, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps a cost-benefit analysis would suggest we shouldn't help 'Pally' kids

  • I’m exasperated by people whose hearts bleed for only one side, or who say about the toll on the other: “It’s tragic, but ….” No “buts.” Unless you believe in human rights for Jews and for Palestinians, you don’t actually believe in human rights.Likewise, Palestinians deserve a country, freedom and dignity — and they shouldn’t be subjected to collective punishment. We’ve reached a searing milestone: In just five weeks of war, half of 1 percent of Gaza’s population has been killed. To put it in perspective, that’s more than the share of the American population that was killed in all of World War II — over the course of four years. Nicholas Kristoff,'What We Get Wrong About Israel and Gaza,' New York Times 15 November 2023
  • Most editors won't have time to read the several good book-length studies of Hamas. But an excellent early study of its dynamics is available on jstor and should be required reading, as a cautionary prophylaxis against swallowing holus-bolus the Hamas=terrorism-and-nothing-else meme that is an article of faith in mainstream reportage, and the default staple of nearly all Israeli newspapers. I refer to Menachem Klein, Hamas in Power, Middle East Journal , Summer 2007, Vol. 61, No. 3 , pp. 442-459 Nishidani (talk) 21:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

The Salah al-Din Trail of Tears or something like that will probably be written some years down the track, when testimonies from masses of survivors of the trek involving over a million individuals are cross-checked. The killing of several dozen local reporters has made the collection of evidence extremely difficult, the systemic bias of giving intense coverage to Jewish victims of Hamas's outrage while only referring to the obvious death march in generic allusions to an abstract mass's plight in a line or two. Some of Hajjaj's material consists of rumours, but the hallucinating experiences of people like the lad with the smashed leg look typical and not unlikely for at least several thousands.Nishidani (talk) 07:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the saying, 'scum always rises to the surface' is invariably true, but the bags here do appear to follow the rule. Thanks. Nishidani (talk) 06:02, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Yesterday, Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor Arieh King tweeted a photo of over a hundred naked Palestinians who were kidnapped by the Israeli military in Gaza, handcuffed, and sitting in the sand, guarded by Israeli soldiers. King wrote that “The IDF is exterminating the Nazi Muslims in Gaza” and that “we must up the tempo”. “If it were up to me,” he added, “I would bring 4 D9’s [bulldozers], place them behind the sandy hills and give an order to bury all those hundreds of Nazis alive. They are not human beings and not even human animals, they are subhuman and that is how they should be treated,” King said. He ended by repeating Netanyahu’s biblical Amalek genocidal reference: “Eradicate the memory of the Amalek, we will not forget.” Jonathan Ofir, 'I used to think the term ’Judeo-Nazis’ was excessive. I don’t any longer,' Mondoweiss 8 December 2023

Nothing of this surprises me. What does is the moral cowardice of the communities who stand by. Nishidani (talk) 00:13, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

There are several reasons for the moral cowardice of the wealthy western nations (especially the US, Western Europe, Canada, Australia etc). At least two reasons come to mind: (a) The tremendous power of the pro-Israel lobbies in these countries, and (b) There are very large fossil fuel reserves near the coast of Gaza, and the US strongly prefers that these reserves would be under Israeli control and not under Palestinian control, because if they're in Palestinian hands the Palestinians then could sell (most of) the fossil fuels to China, whereas if these resources are in Israeli hands, the US government could exert enormously powerful pressure on the Israeli gov't to refrain from selling them to China.
Over the last 15 years or so, the US has been gradually shifting its foreign policy (for the US, its 'foreign' policy has always been practically indistinguishable from being a key component of its overall long-horizon economic policy) to focusing on trying to 'compete' with China i.e. to weaken/ hurt/ cripple the Chinese economy as much as possible. This is true for all US administrations regardless of political party affiliation, including both Democunt as well as Republicunt, starting in the last couple of years of the Bush Jr administration and continuing with the administrations of Obama, Trump and now Biden. The numbers don't lie, and the economic numbers are basically almost all that has ever mattered to US (and Chinese, Western European, etc) decision makers. Up until recent years, US GDP was by far the largest on the planet, but in the last few decades China's GDP has been growing faster than the US's and has recently surpassed the US: today China's GDP (PPP) is roughly about $33 Trillion, while US GDP (PPP) is about $27 trillion. That is, from the POV of US decision makers, their top priority, by far, is how to slow - and preferably reverse - the fact that the US has in recent years lost its undisputed global economic dominance to China.
See this, among several other articles and books published in recent years about the geopolitical implications of the vast oil and natural gas reserves near the Gaza shoreline. Ijon Tichy (talk) 19:23, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Well, I think that is a piece of wishful thinking. It is simply wrong-headed to assert that 'Settler colonial states have a terminal shelf life. Israel is no exception'. The 'new' world is dominated by successful settler colonial states that have withstood the usury of time, and indeed thrived, and Israel will be no exception. Of course this latest triumph of Zionism rubbishes the moral force of both the haskalah tradition and the Holocaust, but they too are past their use-by date.Nishidani (talk) 01:18, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
None of which is reported abroad. That Gaza is one huge whore, deserving of genocidal rape by missiles carrying the signatures of young Israeli women, is all over Israeli social media, as are euphoric chants by children, rabbinical students and entertainers in army camps mocking the destruction of Palestinian women and children. It's all there, and invisible to readers. Words fail one.Nishidani (talk) 13:10, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
That the NYTs article is a pretentious exercise in pseudo-journalism is self-evident, but I don't think Max B is at his best there. That challenge is not meticulous but somewhat offhandish. MB was showing signs of fatigue. Does an amputated breast maintain its shape so that it can be thrown around and juggled like a ball, as was claimed? That is now a meme, and I've yet to see anyone stop to think about it. Only in Picasso's imagination, one would think. I made the 850 mile train trip to Madrid in late 1981 just to catch the inaugural showing in that country of Guernica. There has been a Guernica every day since 7 Oct. The past has no more resonance.Nishidani (talk) 04:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Whenever I hear the babble of nonsense with which politicians dress up the horrors of war, I am once more that seven-year-old child, shocked, bewildered and deeply shamed.' Richard Flanagan Question 7, 2023 p.64.

Thanks, N. I noted in particular

the United States is a liberal democracy that is filled with intellectuals, newspaper editors, policymakers, pundits, and scholars who routinely proclaim their deep commitment to protecting human rights around the world. They tend to be highly vocal when countries commit war crimes, especially if the United States or any of its allies are involved. In the case of Israel’s genocide, however, most of the human rights mavens in the liberal mainstream have said little about Israel’s savage actions in Gaza or the genocidal rhetoric of its leaders. Hopefully, they will explain their disturbing silence at some point. Regardless, history will not be kind to them, as they said hardly a word while their country was complicit in a horrible crime, perpetrated right out in the open for all to see.

Application Instituting Proceedings regarding Israel's genocide lodged by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. pp.59-67 provide clear verbal evidence of genocidal intent by Israel's leaders.Nishidani (talk) 01:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
This explained the anomalies in the attacks that I noted within the first two days, if the hypothesis of a rift within Hamas between the political and military wings, which led to a radical change in the battle orders by Sinyar et al., in the last three hours to include attacks on civilians, proves to be correct. Note that the rape, mutilation etc charges that were used to orchestrate Israel's case for retributive genocide against this collective of 'animals' are eerily reminiscent of, almost a replica of the testimonies about the Israeli assault on Palestinians at the Massacre of Deir Yassin in 48. Nishidani (talk) 01:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Jewish Scholars vs. Jewish Donors on Antisemitism (22 January 2024). By Peter Beinart for The Beinart Notebook. "... But there’s another divide, I think, kind of hidden divide, inside the American Jewish community that is often overlooked, that gets described in the language of antisemitism. And that’s a kind of a divide around class between different elements in the Jewish community that have different views about Israel and that are in different positions in terms of class. And I want to try to give an example of how this is playing itself out."
Well if Friedman and his likes are now going mainstream with vermin tropes for the adversarial 'Other' (Theodor Adorno has a good early analysis of insect metaphors for despised ethnic groups, in The Authoritarian Personality (1951) - it was a serious element in antisemitic caricatures, vide Kafka for the most egregious example) I guess I'd better make a wiki page on the history of this variety of subhuman stereotype as it has developed in Israeli discourse on Palestinians.Nishidani (talk) 01:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Good idea. Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:35, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
Not quite news to me. An insider privy to these things told me a good while back that the Gazan fields' resources were already being pilfered from by some lateral intrusions. Nishidani (talk) 23:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
With regard to this item, scruple demands that I ask myself whether or not this young man might have been murdered by a Palestinian militant, in retaliation for acting as an Israeli messenger. Unlikely, but one never knows. All one has learnt from this war is that Israeli culture has never absorbed any moral lesson from the holocaust, except that moral sentiments are trash, a dangerous weakness in one's chutzpah armour or amour-propre. The real sum of the Palestinian dead has now reached roughly 38,000. Nishidani (talk) 22:26, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Israeli necropolitics and the pursuit of health justice in Palestine (Received 30 December 2023, Accepted 2 January 2024). Layth Hanbali, Edwin Jit Leung Kwong, Amy Neilson, James Smith, Sali Hafez, Rasha Khoury. BMJ Global Health, a prestigious peer reviewed academic journal. This particular paper is probably more of an editorial, it was not commissioned for external review but was internally peer reviewed. Some key sections:
"The horrific scale of Israel’s latest attacks validates the concerns and calls raised in our editorial: namely that Israel’s ongoing military violence in Gaza is an extension of the longstanding, systemic violence intrinsic to the Israeli state’s colonisation and occupation of Palestine. Connections can be clearly traced between the exploitation and dispossession of people, land and resources that defined European colonial violence, ongoing neocolonial exploitation worldwide, and every aspect of Israel’s settler colonial violence in Palestine today. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to actions that expose and challenge sites of exploitative and extractive power and violence. People’s health, lives and freedoms are at risk…
"Attempts to dehistoricise and decontextualise the present encourage us to ignore the many ways in which the Israeli state dictates both life and death for the Palestinian people, either through the fast violence of aerial bombardments, or what Berlant referred to as ‘slow death’: visible in the progressive dispossession of Palestinians who are crammed into ever-shrinking spaces, the denial of life-sustaining necessities and services, the destruction of livelihoods, repeated physical assaults and disablement, mass incarceration, extensive restrictions on movement (including to seek healthcare), and now ethnic cleansing in Gaza executed by mustering Palestinians through a dystopian grid of ever-shifting, supposedly ‘safe zones…
"The recognition of the systematic nature of this violence, and the pervasiveness of Israeli state control over almost every aspect of the everyday lives of Palestinians, made the philosopher Achille Mbembé declare that: ‘The most accomplished form of necropower is the contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine’. It is the power to dictate the terms of life and death, and ultimately who lives and who dies. Repeatedly framing Palestinian violence as a provocation and Israeli violence as a response is a product of ignorance to the necropower exercised by the Israeli state. Necropower and necropolitics are enabled in places that Achille Mbembé termed ‘death-worlds’, where ‘vast populations are subjected to conditions of life’ that enable a precarious form of survival in perpetual proximity to death. Within this world, there is gross indifference to Palestinian suffering and extreme obfuscation of the horrors of Israeli necropolitics.
"Executive Summary
"Overall
"The ongoing Israel-Gaza war has heavily affected civilians in both the Gaza Strip and Israel. Residents of Gaza are now mostly displaced from their homes and living in overcrowded conditions with insufficient access to water, sanitation and food, and health services have been considerably disrupted. So, to inform humanitarian and other decision-makers working on the Gaza crisis, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University have initiated a project to estimate the potential public health impact of the crisis under different future trajectories of its evolution. The first set of projections covers a six-month period from 7 February to 6 August 2024. The projections will be periodically updated until May 2024. The projections are not predictions of what will happen in Gaza but provide a range of projections of what could happen under three distinct scenarios: 1) an immediate permanent ceasefire; 2) status quo (a continuation of conditions experienced from October 2023 till mid-January); and 3) a further escalation of the conflict.
"The projections are based on a range of publicly available data from the current and past Gaza crises, data from similar crises, and peer-reviewed published research into excess death estimates and take into account the limitations and biases of different data sources. Where data is limited or unavailable, the projections draw on consultations with experts. These projections are designed to help humanitarian organisations, governments, and other actors plan their response to the crisis and take sound, evidence-based decisions. Ultimately, the hope is that they will make some contribution to saving lives.
"Over the next six months we project that, in the absence of epidemics, 6,550 excess deaths would occur under the ceasefire scenario, climbing to 58,260 under the status quo scenario and 74,290 under the escalation scenario. Over the same period and with the occurrence of epidemics, our projections rise to 11,580, 66,720, and 85,750, respectively. All projections feature 95% uncertainty intervals as shown in the Summary Table below.
"Under the ceasefire scenario, the projections suggest that infectious diseases would be the main cause of excess deaths, with 1,520 total infectious disease excess deaths without epidemics and 6,550 including epidemics. Traumatic injuries followed by infectious diseases would be the main causes of excess deaths in both the status quo (53,450 traumatic injuries; 2,120 total infectious disease excess deaths without epidemics and 10,590 including epidemics) and escalation scenarios (68,650 traumatic injuries; 2,720 total infectious disease excess deaths without epidemics and 14,180 including epidemics).
"Our projections indicate that even in the best-case ceasefire scenario, thousands of excess deaths would continue to occur, mainly due to the time it would take to improve water, sanitation and shelter conditions, reduce malnutrition, and restore functioning healthcare services in Gaza. While the total number of estimated excess deaths from maternal and neonatal causes are relatively small (100-330 excess deaths), every loss of a mother has severe consequences for family health and wellbeing. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) were the primary cause of death in Gaza in 2022, and the conflict has aggravated these conditions (1,680-2,680 excess deaths) via heavily disrupted specialised health services and impeded access to treatment and medications.
  • thanks. I wouldn't have otherwise caught that, which is clinically scientific and ventures rational scenarios, all of which translate into a statement that Israeli and American decision-makers are now familiar with the likely lethal consequences of the three options available. Sara Roy, with Jean-Pierre Filiu and Finkelstein the 3 world authorities on the Strip, spoke a year ago, before oCT 7 of Israel's longterm planned catastrophe'.Nishidani (talk) 23:33, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Shielding (the) US Public From Israeli Reports of Friendly Fire on October 7 (23 February 2024). Bryce Greene, in Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. "... Indeed, IDF responsibility for Israeli deaths has been a repeated topic of discussion in the Israeli press, accompanied by demands for investigations. But the most US readers have gotten from their own press about the issue is a dismissive piece from the Washington Post about October 7 “truthers.” ... How many Israeli civilians were actually killed by Hamas, and how many by Israel? Was the Al Aqsa Flood a terrorist attack designed to kill as many civilians as possible? These are important questions that have yet to be conclusively and independently answered, but the Washington Post seems to want to dissuade people from even asking them. In evoking the specter of Holocaust denial, Dwoskin and the Post are not defending the truth, but attempting to protect readers from it." Ijon Tichy (talk) 19:38, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
Were the four main Hamas leaders in Gaza endowed with an intelligent grasp of the wider forces of the modern international order, they would offer to place themselves in the hands of the ICJ to be put on trial in the Hague for crimes against humanity, a position Hamas outlined some years ago as their readiness to be prosecuted abroad were such a trial to allow similar measures against Israeli leaders. Since the measure they took in attacking Israel foreseeably enabled the genocide of their own people underway, a cost they must have calculated, they should in theory accept that this kind of personal commitment to their own symbolic 'martyrdom' in a court of law is the one step that could sway world opinion to insist that Israel stop the war. Unfortunately, this won't happen. Nishidani (talk) 00:37, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
I read quite a few years ago that 15% of American kids go to bed feeling hungry, something that I recall to mind while reading Israeli debates on whether or not children under 4 (but not over that age limit) should be provided with food currently. Ralph Nadar has now made the point more cogently.

Why is Congress preparing to appropriate over $14 billion to Israel in military and other aid without any public hearings and without any demonstrated fiscal need by Israel, a prosperous economic, technological and military superpower with a social safety net superior to that of the U.S.? USDA just reported over 44 million Americans struggled with hunger in 2022. Ralph Nader, What the Mass Media Needs to Cover Re: Israel/Gaza Conflict CounterPunch 26 February 2024

Yes, Hunger in the United States is a serious problem. Other major socio-economic problems include (but are not limited to) Homelessness in the United States, serious Crime in the United States (including gun violence), the largest known prison population in the world, the fact that annually tens of thousands of families declare bankruptcy because they are unable to pay their exorbitant medical bills, a relatively weak social safety net, a government with legislative and executive branches that for many decades have been to a very large extent captured by wealthy special interests/ Inverted totalitarianism, as well as other serious socio-economic ills.
Thanks for the article by Ralph Nader, it is informative and thought-provoking. Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
Like Chalmers Johnson - one of the most thoughtful and insightful thinkers on US imperialism - said many years ago (slightly paraphrasing from my rusty memory): Don't read the New York Times to find out the truth, read the New York Times to find out the lies. (I don't think this is invariably true, but it is frequently true.) Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
I've already read both. I said from the outset that the horrendous massacre of several hundred civilians in one day would be spun in spectacularly lurid terms, when the mere facts were sufficient to freeze one's blood. Some years down the line, the actual facts and statistics, and contexts of each tragedy or act of violence will finally emerge. But the template of cooked babies, stabbed children, bayoneted vaginas, slashed-off breasts etc.etc.etc., has predictably won the day and will remain functional for the time frame that is important, the war, both on the ground, and in the media. The 130 odd hostages are prime time news: the 7000 Palestinians who languish in prisons, 3,000 alone seized from their families after 7 Oct as bartering material in future negotations, -tortured and uncharged, are in Palestinian terms, hostages, seized predominantly for political reasons, but the semantic distinction between 'hostage' and 'arrested suspect' means there too, the battle of misrepresentation has been won. All of these reports and counter-reports conjure up for me an image of a frigate armed with 40 36-pounder long guns engaging with a dhow defending itself with a handful of jezails. Nishidani (talk) 19:43, 17 March 2024 (UTC)


  • Establishment Papers Fell Short in Coverage of Genocide Charges (21 March 2024). Lara-Nour Walton, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). "Establishment media in the US were slow to cover South Africa’s “epochal intervention” in the ICJ—initially providing the public with thin to no reporting on the case. While the quantity of coverage did eventually increase, it skewed pro-Israel, even after the court in January found it “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and ordered Tel Aviv to comply with international law."
That's better than a lot of the things that he's written in the past (not citable because it is self-published), and quite powerful, simply because he sticks to the factual details, which being appalling, are worth more than a lot of emotional outbursts. Another item today illustrates the point.

The number of trucks crossing into Gaza rose slightly to about 190 a day – less than half the peacetime daily total. Israeli inspectors were still turning back 20 to 25 each day, NBC News reported, citing an Egyptian aid official, on grounds as arbitrary as the wooden pallets bearing the food not being exactly the right dimensions. Israel has banned Unrwa, the main UN relief agency in the region, from using the crossing.' Julian Borger, Toby Helm, Lorenzo Tondo, Quique Kierszenbaum Israel alone? Allies’ fears grow over conduct – and legality – of war in Gaza The Guardian 31 March 2024

Banning UNWRA as well, which has the only large organization on the ground with a proven distribution network, has suicidal consequences, just as the emergence of clan gangs taking over the control of the little food airdropped because Israel shoots to kill the local police who traditionally maintained order on the grounds that they are employed by Hamas and therefore terrorists (not in international law) is a recipé for even more violence, inside the world of the starving survivors itself. Nishidani (talk) 17:19, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
  • Israeli propagandist behind Hamas ‘mass rape’ narrative exposed as grifter, fraud (25 March 2024). The Grayzone.   "Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the Israeli lawyer at the center of the campaign accusing Hamas of systematic sexual violence on October 7, now stands accused by Israeli media of scamming donors and spreading misinformation. The allegations appeared just days after Elkayam-Levy received the prestigious Israel Prize."
  • UN Tells Israel: Cease Fire; NYT Says: If You Want (4 April 2024). Dave Lindorff, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).   "The editorial boards of the nation’s major media organizations must have been frantic last week.   Used to reporting on US foreign policy, wars and arms exports so as to portray the United States as a benevolent, law-abiding and democracy-defending nation, they were confronted on March 25 with a real challenge dealing with Israel and Gaza. No sooner did the Biden administration, for the first time, abstain and thus allow passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution that was not just critical of Israel, but demanded a ceasefire in Gaza, than US officials began declaring that the resolution that they allowed to pass was really meaningless.   It was “nonbinding,” they said.   The New York Times (3/25/24) reported that US’s UN Ambassdor “Thomas-Greenfield called the resolution ‘nonbinding’” —- and let no one contradict her.   That was enough for the New York Times (3/25/24), which produced the most one-sided report on the decision."
  • Israel's toxic legacy: White phosphorus bombs on south Lebanon (25 March 2024). Justin Salhani for Al Jazeera.   " ... Driving out civilians, burning down their agricultural lands, poisoning their soil and water, destroying their homes, dropping cluster munitions, and paralysing the local economy are part of what they say are efforts to make south Lebanon uninhabitable today, tomorrow and long into the future.   “The target is to create a wasteland in the south,” Baalbaki said.   “It’s to break the link between the people and their ties to the ground, their nature, their trees. The target is to tell them that this is an inhospitable area and to leave it.”" Ijon Tichy (talk) 22:31, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
Alas, this (nothing new in terms of prisoner treatment) is only the tip of the iceberg. I can't and wouldn't read tweets on principle. Here, there is nothing 'chirpy' to be tweeted about.Nishidani (talk) 13:19, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
I respect your decision to refrain from reading tweets on principle. Would you care to share which principle you are alluding to? In the past, I have seen some people objecting to the format/ style of tweets because of the 280 character limitation on the length of each individual tweet. But this limitation has been increased last year to 4,000 characters. Many world-class scholars and investigative reporters tweet extensively and frequently including essay-length tweets, e.g. Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Jonathan Cook, and thousands of others in many important topics/ subjects (including but certainly not limited to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).
For example, here is a recent insightful essay by Norman Finkelstein, posted on twitter (last I checked, this essay was unavailable on Finkelstein's personal blog on Substack): ISRAEL’S MORAL DILEMMA (April 5, 2024). Regards, Ijon Tichy (talk) 15:33, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Okay, one more proof I'm an ignarunt effwit. For years the computer I worked on could never visualise any link to a twitter site, and I was amazed on clicking on the link in this revarnished computer, that I could access NF's post there. But the principle will still obtain. I've never had a smartphone, nor a Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account because my observation on those who do is that, generally, they spend an inordinate amount of time on browsing those media, and, at this burntout end of a smokey life, I value time: every day must be free, unconstrained by disturbances or distractions, of being sucked up into the blogosphere. Working wikipedia for a few hours is trying enough. I find even simple sentences, my own included (when, rarely, they emerge as just simple statements) question-begging so I prefer to spend my time foraging in books or jstor article on any number of topics. That said, I'm glad to have read NK's note there: I think those of us who have closely followed the several wars, know that the Kitchen Car incident was old hat, unique only in that it drew exclamations and outrage, whereas scores of such incidents of the type (a) a misile collapses an apartment block (b) survivors, with neighbours' help, emerge dazed and (c) ambulances arrive and (d) the ambulances are shot up, are so commonplace (as he illustrates from 2014 - I still recall those two) that it is only remarkable that (other than Finkelstein's 2017 book) there seems to be no scholarly interest in connecting the dots, and writing a comprehensive analysis of such 'incidents' over the last 18 years to elicit the military logic behind it. Certainly this war abounds in such cases. Hegel wrote that 'die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug'. The owl in this case probably flies no more, exhausted by the futility of causing a late flap after each war, only to see the identical tragedy and the identical abuses, identical bullshitting memes of self-exculpation, renew themselves regardless Nishidani (talk) 21:17, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Recognition by Norway, Ireland and Spain

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

was met by just one 'argument', showing a video of hostages:'Israel’s foreign ministry said it would reprimand the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian ambassadors and show them a video of female hostages being held in captivity by Hamas..'Rory Carroll and Sam Jones, Ireland, Spain and Norway to recognise Palestinian state The Guardian 22 May 2024-05-22

Perhaps the ambassadors should reciprocally show the Foreign Ministry the following video. Nishidani (talk) 13:49, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Netanyahu's criticism of the ICC was not fully translated into English, but truncated, breaking off apparently to avoid the following words, a biblical quotation which, in Jonathan Ofir's reconstruction, express a desire to exterminate the 'Amalekites/Palestinians'. Ofir may be wrong in his very close, precise construal of the censored passage and its contextual resonance, Netzah Israel lo yeshaker (נצח ישראל לא ישקר: 'the Eternal One of Israel shall not lie'.1 Samuel 15:29) of course, but the exegesis strikes this reader as cogent. See Jonathan Ofir, Netanyahu’s response to the ICC invokes another genocidal biblical reference, Mondoweiss 21 May 2024

Consensual convention for leads on settlements

Latest comment: 3 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Hi, can you direct me to the discussion about this convention?Eladkarmel (talk) 08:51, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Ask Nableezy. This point has been made several times over the years when that formulation has been removed, and Nableezy has the details at his fingertips, while I, at this late age, still have my fingertip elsewhere, and decaying memory hasn't the force to pull it out. Nishidani (talk) 08:54, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
@Nableezy can you please direct me? (@Nishidani I hope it's okay for me to use your talk page for this) Eladkarmel (talk) 09:05, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
WP:Legality of Israeli settlements. nableezy - 13:15, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for filling my memory blank.Nishidani (talk) 13:36, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Religion

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The wording in your edit summary was excellent. I'm adding that to my "How To Say Difficult Things" list. Joyous! Noise! 14:14, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. It was just an allusion to William James's view that any individual's religion is essentially private. To call someone a 'Christian', 'Jew', 'Buddhist', 'Muslim' begs too many questions to be an intelligible attribute, however much this linguistic, ergo conceptual, caution is abused in our sorry times. Regards.Nishidani (talk) 14:22, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Hope you're OK.

Latest comment: 3 months ago9 comments3 people in discussion

I'm a bit worried, having just seen your edit summary. "Hospitalised"? Hope it's nothing serious. --NSH001 (talk) 17:12, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Just old age making its first knock on the door of a body that's been obscenely fit for 73 years. Vertigo. Collapsed on the kitchen floor while bending to feed my cat, and couldn't get up for a while, as I vomited. As my head spun at this new experience, I made some tests: 14x18 =252, recited a poem flawlessly, so I knew it wasn't cognitive, which was the only worry. A neighbour summoned an ambulance, and they gave me a thorough checkup, scans, blood analysis, cognitive tests, heart - and concluded it was probably either benign paroxysmal positional vertigo or labyrinthitis, to be checked out with an otolaryngologist and neurologist, which I'll do. I learnt two things: my local hospital is very efficient and thorough, and (b) back on my feet, having reengineered my instinctive body movements to a slower measure (everyone complains I walk too fast etc.) I seem to be able to do what interests me,-other than reading - household tasks, gardening, etc. In any case, something like that was long overdue, and a salutary reminder to use time well, rather than kill it. Thanks for the inquiry, mate, but, for the mo', all's well, as I hope things are your way.Nishidani (talk) 18:56, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
This happened to me about 2.5 years ago. I woke up in the morning, got out of bed and walked towards the bathroom when suddenly I collapsed on the floor (fortunately I did not vomit). I managed to crawl back to bed and proceeded to describe the symptoms to my physician over the phone. He immediately diagnosed it as BPPV and emailed to me links to YouTube videos containing exercises for BPPV (the vids are easy to find on YouTube). I did the exercises and they helped to significantly alleviate some of the worst symptoms, but did not entirely eliminate all symptoms. The problem appeared to go away on its own after about 2 days and I was completely symptom-free for about a week until the BPPV reappeared (although the symptoms were somewhat milder this time compared to the first time), again I did the exercises and this time almost all the symptoms disappeared after about only 1 day. About one week later the BPPV reared its ugly head again although this time the symptoms were even slightly less pronounced than the previous time. Fortunately this was the last time I experienced BPPV or any type of vertigo.
In my case the BPPV may have occurred due to, or was exacerbated by, my habit of laying on my back in bed and reading for many hours in a row. I think keeping my head in this position for several consecutive hours may have caused some kind of disturbance with the fluids in my ear canal.
Wishing you a quick and full recovery. My cat sends his love to his granpa Nishidani and to your cat. Ijon Tichy (talk) 20:56, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
Thanks IjonT. That is both very useful and consoling. A friend in Seattle gave me similar advice. I never read for more than an hour in bed, preferring an upright chair. I'll wait for the full consultancy with the local otolaryngologist before using any of the available methods, while observing myself these next few days. I went to the pub and resumed drinking, knocking down a pint to see if grog affected my walk back. Not at all, fortunately! Cat the pat spooneristically with a frisk of a soft mitten for your purring kitten. Damn it, this last runic run suggests I may have some cognitive disturbance after all :) Nishidani (talk) 22:24, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
Nishi, sounds like you need to be careful in situations where you may need to change the orientation of your head, but overall your approach seems sensible. I hope the docs will be able to give you a definite diagnosis, which will help put your mind at rest. That wasn't the case with my father's last illness, where the medics (in Scotland) were unable to come up with a convincing explanation of his symptoms, and within 4 months he was dead.
Good that you don't need to travel very far to the hospital. Here, for many years, there has been a tendency to concentrate medical facilities into a smaller number of much larger hospitals. Has the advantage of "efficiency" looking at it from the hospital's POV, but outsourcing part of the cost – in time and money – to the patients, which of course gets ignored in the official reckoning. To get to the big hospital takes between 20 mins (by taxi at 3a.m.) and 100 mins (also by taxi, but during the day with 5 sets of road works along the way, and a traffic jam at every one); the main alternative is the train, which takes about an hour, including a 20-min walk at the other end (slightly longer if you're wearing a catheter). Bus is also possible, but they're slow and I just don't like them. I've become an expert on all the different ways of getting to the hospital! Next month I have a prostate-op follow-up appointment at a nearer hospital (which used to be quite good, but most of its beds have now been transferred to the main hospital). Only a ten-minute train ride away, plus some walking. The consultant has to travel there from the main hospital, so at least they're making a token effort to help reduce the hassle for patients. There is also a small local hospital, most of its beds have also been transferred, I think the only beds left are the maternity ward. There is a nurse-led unit for treating minor injuries, they have always done a superb job whenever I've needed help there. Better than the other hospitals, despite the relative lack of resources. Very impressed by the sister who runs it, highly competent medically. I once expressed some sympathy for the nurses' demand for more pay, she seemed shocked that she should be paid more money, what she wanted was more staff and more resouces (and less bureaucracy) so that she could give a better service. --NSH001 (talk) 06:53, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
Were your father's symptoms like those I experienced? If so, then of course, something other than the condition's names could be there, e.g. Menière's disease. I don't apply to myself the urgent inquisitiveness, however, that this or that particular problem of textual interpretation tends to stir, being somewhat detached and fatalistic about the 'end thing'. On the floor, as i underwent the first dizzy spell, the verses I recited to test if my mnemonic faculty was functioning were Hilaire Belloc's The World's a Stage:-

The world's a stage. The trifling entrance fee
Is paid (by proxy) to the registrar.
The Orchestra is very loud and free
But plays no music in particular.

They do not print a programme, that I know.
The cast is large. There isn't any plot.
The acting of the piece is far below
The very worst of modernistic rot.

The only part about it I enjoy
Is what was called in English the Foray.
There will I stand apart awhile and toy
With thought, and set my cigarette alight;
And then — without returning to the play
On with my coat and out into the night.

These verses (not quite a poem, there's too much of an tacit, perhaps inadvertent narcissistic dismissal of the wonder of life, and of the pleasure of fellowship in it to qualify as poetry, but they nonetheless) capture a strong sense of fastidious unease in the world as it is shaping up, at least for a bloke of my years. Must have breakfast, but will get back to you re hospitals (and mny best auguries for the up-and-coming surgery, pal) Nishidani (talk) 08:04, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
In answer to your question about my father, no, his symtoms were nothing at all like yours. I have a suspicion they might have been connected to a recent flu jab, but there is no way of proving or disproving that hypothesis. But ever since then I have eschewed the annual offer of a flu jab, and in that time (more than 25 years) I have had only a couple of minor colds, over with in 2 or three days. The hospital appointment is only a small query arising from the routine blood tests they do every 6 months for patients on blood pressure meds. I don't think it's anything serious, but we shall see. If surgery were involved, nowadays the only place they can do it is the main hospital. --NSH001 (talk) 10:38, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
I was surprised by how the local hospital responded. The Meloni government, constituted, save for two competent technicians, by dolts, dullards and ideological dingbats, is of course a disgrace: and is adopting the Republican line that health care should be privatised in order to reduce the ballooning national debt which they are vigorously adding to (only apparently a paradox). 4 million Italians have given up trying to get medical care because of the long waiting procedures (in place to incentivize people to go to expensive private clinics), and in response, with that impeccable stupidity of the new class of incompetents running the show, have cut outlays from 6.7 to 6.1% for the next two years. As in England, the only reason why you can still get appropriate care is that health care workers are, on average, morally a big cut above everyone else in society - they really work hard, despite being grossly underpaid (whenever I see, as one can't avoid seeing, celebrity articles or flashy news about the doings or 'trials' of billionaires, I think of nurses and ward workers). With half an hour an ambulance came, I had a first examination at home, then was whisked down to the hospital a few minutes away, waited just an hour, and given a thorough check-up. They didn't even ask me for my residence permit and health card, and, diagnosis made with advice to go through my local doctor for two further examinations, I walked out without paying a brass razoo (which I'd be quite happy to do, apart from being a taxpayer in a country where fiscal evasion is massive). When I had a checkup for a smoker's cough in Australia, my own country, last summer, it cost me $400 (again, happily paid, but one notes the difference). It's not that one wants a free ride. It is simply a matter of a very obvious principle. If a society in its rhetoric talks about 'community', 'rights', 'democratic values', that is all hollow if, in this fundamental sector, whether you can get adequate treatment or not for an illness depends on your ability to pay your own way, then obviously the concept of citizenship is a mirage: your survival or death, in a 'community', is directly correlated with your wealth/poverty, class/existence itself is indexed to personal assets.* Universal health care was guaranteed when Western nations were relatively poor. The massive inflation of national wealth has seen, at the same time, the dismantlement of that basic institution of existential security. But enough of this blather. Work.Nishidani (talk) 09:14, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
  • It is the same weird mathematics of the latest Rafah bombing. Two hamas commanders were 'taken out'. Since the death toll was 45, that means 43 - mostly the children and women in those blasted tents - were acceptable 'collateral damage'. Which means that concept of proportionality in war in Israel operational terms now defines the acceptable level of killing bystanders to hit the enemy, as 95.55%. That may explain why the Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto in the present Meloni government suddenly and unexpectedly attacked the behaviour of Israel this morning as 'unacceptable', stating his impression further (a position that has always been of one my own two core concerns) that by its actions 'Israel is spreading hatred, rooting hatred that will involve their children and grandchildren', i.e. complicit in feeding antisemitism. Nishidani (talk) 09:29, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

So they finally begin to notice

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments1 person in discussion

what happens every other week, and has so for almost 4 decades. Not a 'brief massacre' but a long-term one. Nishidani (talk) 16:45, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

e.g. The Western media haven't ever carried images, until today (hence the outrage over what is otherwise an absolutely facet of life there), if on maginal sites, such as this (a headless child victim of one more precision strike), which Gazans have directly witnessed over the last 18 years with hundreds of children. Nishidani (talk) 22:23, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

West Bank up for sale:)

Latest comment: 3 months ago8 comments2 people in discussion

Nettanel Slyomovics, Trump Is Desperate for Miriam Adelson's Cash. Her Condition: West Bank Annexation Haaretz 3 June 2024. The prospective buyer is Miriam Adelson. Nishidani (talk) 13:34, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Not to pop in here without good cause, but does that mean that we need additional caution for anything by Israel Hayom that affects Trump? FortunateSons (talk) 14:54, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Since Israel Hayom was developed by Adelson specifically in order to (a) support Netanyahu as a personal favour (b) undermine the economic viability of 'mainstream' Israeli newspapers by its free distribution policy, it is not a reliable source for anything, certainly not for wikipedia. I personally regard Electronic Intifada as offering at times important and usable sources, but exercise self-restraint, deferring to the consensus not to use it (and not even trying to challenge that consensus), though it is regularly indisputably more insightful (per John Mearsheimer) than tabloid hack outlets like Israel Hayom, or for that matter Arutz Sheva. All the more reason to desist from trying to legitimize the latter two as sources.Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
I can’t find a RS for a relationship between an and b (only people claiming it), but we should definitely use high-quality sources wherever possible, and all 3 named in the article are to be generally avoided IMO (to the best of my current knowledge).
I thank you for the additional reasons not to use the latter two, though my almost non-existent Hebrew would probably be the immediate problem if I were to attempt that. FortunateSons (talk) 16:12, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
The connection between (a) and (b) is well known, and though I wouldn't force the point by an edit (WP:OR) it is obvious from lining up any number of quotes from numerous sources on IH's origins.

(b)Nir Hefetz key state’s witness in Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial testified Tuesday that the former prime minister actively pushed for the establishment of a free tabloid in order to blunt Israel’s biggest-selling newspaper, which he considered hostile to him.

(a)Adelson was willing to invest large sums of money into IH without any guarantee of a return on that investment, which allowed him to create a product of sufficient quality that people on all sides would be willing to consume. He also invested in a successful distribution strategy, placing IH in train stations and other central areas throughout the country.In just four years, IH became the most circulated newspaper in Israel. That’s stunning.

A primary principle in my tertiary education came from a scholar who, while appreciating my detailed genealogies of where this bad idea or that bad idea came from (not recognised as such, but emerging as such only when you tracked the origin down), asked me:'Have you every looked into who pays for the proliferation of these ideas?,' an abrupt realism that traditional proverbial wisdom summed up in the line:'he who pays the piper calls the tune'. Perhaps a formula more adequate to recent times would be 'he who pays for the paper calls the (looney) tune'. I don't use wikipedia's RS criteria for informing my own views. I tend to respect opinions which, beyond the impressiveness of the informed scholarship that must be indispensable, come from people who have nothing to gain personally from espousing them. To the contrary.Nishidani (talk) 16:39, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
The link for b leads to a picture for me, but while I agree that it’s OR, I would say that your claim is very plausible.
Speaking only for myself as a person and not necessarily an editor, I personally consider for-profit and privately owned media to not be inherently less reliable (including by the very wealthy, though that may be my own political and social bias bleeding into it).
Nevertheless, I think we share an appreciation for those who create media without the expectation of material or immaterial benefit - especially including the sharing of opinions that may even be harmful to the greater causes which one subscribes to.
Thank you for sharing that story, it has definitely been a good reminder to be cautious when it comes to media consumption and use. FortunateSons (talk) 17:06, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
It's a bigger historically deeper divide than media. The larger issue is best summed up briefly, if one hasn't the time to go into the respective fields of scholarship, in this discussion between John Mearsheimer and Steven Pinker. I grew up thinking like Pinker (before I read his books), but 6 decades has me siding with Mearsheimer. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 17:14, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the recommendation! I’m avoiding my studies anyway, so it might as well be productive. Sincerly, FortunateSons (talk) 17:26, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Filiu 1994

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi, in this edit you use {{sfn|Filiu|1994|p=66}}. Is it meant to be 2012 like the other Filius? DuncanHill (talk) 10:54, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Duncan, once more you're spot on.Nishidani (talk) 11:19, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
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